On Firing Open Source Community Members 255
An anonymous reader writes: As open source started booming, more people joined. Opinionated people. People who listened to the "we welcome everyone!" message and felt that their opinion could be their primary contribution. For some, they felt showing up at the gig gave them the right to dictate what the band played. From a leadership perspective, this was a tough spot to be in. On one hand, you want to foster an open, welcoming, and empowered community. You want that diversity of skills, but you also want value and quality. Low-quality contributors don't bring much other than noise: they are a net drain on resources because other good contributors have to take time away to support them.
In addition to this, those entitled, special-snowflakes who felt they deserved to be listened to would invariably start whining on their blogs about what they considered to be poor decisions. This caused heat in a community, heat causes sweating, sweating causes irritability, and irritability causes more angry blog posts. Critical blog posts were not the problem; un-constructive, critical blog posts were the problem. So what's the best way to foster a welcoming environment while still being able to remove the destructive elements?
In addition to this, those entitled, special-snowflakes who felt they deserved to be listened to would invariably start whining on their blogs about what they considered to be poor decisions. This caused heat in a community, heat causes sweating, sweating causes irritability, and irritability causes more angry blog posts. Critical blog posts were not the problem; un-constructive, critical blog posts were the problem. So what's the best way to foster a welcoming environment while still being able to remove the destructive elements?
Fire them quickly. (Score:3, Funny)
Would you rather take a bullet to the head or three to the gut. Fire them as quick as possible, then show them the door.
Re:Fire them quickly. (Score:5, Insightful)
Better yet introduce trial periods and reviews so that everyone understands that membership is not guaranteed and something to be respected/valued and help reduce feelings of self entitlement.
And as much as they are not special snowflakes this problem is not either. I mean if you let in candidates unfiltered into your workplace what exactly do you think will happen?
Be aware that many people are not very good at rating their own abilities or contributions and generally live in a self absorbed bubble which may have a highly variable relationship to the real world. (this can include the hirers/firers.)
Be warned that introducing any system of "hiring and firing" is VERY hard to get right (research says most people are terrible at it) and can be abused.
Also, just because someone is a great team member, it does not automatically follow that they will make great recruitment decisions.
Its tough.
This is just how the human race is. Deal with it or live in a cave, those are your choices.
PS: The cave thing was a joke...they will come find you regardless.
Re: (Score:2)
What is this, some kind of corp? These open source developers have been paid exactly squat. How dare you simply take their work for free and then kick them out once they no longer serve your purpose. What a complete ripoff!
I would be okay with the *firing* if the developers got paid in the first place. Otherwise, you h
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Had an interesting discussion about this with some fellow geeks over steak recently, one of them proposed firing the bottom 80% of all your developers. Reason: Not only are they not contributing much that's useful, they are in fact a negative input on productivity since the other 20% who are useful have to go round cleaning up the mess they make.
I'm not sure if it's 80% (I'd say maybe 50%), but I know too many situations like this, where the clueless/incompetent are not only not doing anything useful but ac
Re:Fire them quickly. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's easy for the "elites" to talk down the regular people and dismiss their contributions, but don't let your shop turn into some sort of uber coder jock circle that's destined to implode.
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Also, the remaining 50% will simply quit once they are overworked with the busywork that the bottom 50% used to do.
The issue is that the bottom 50% needs to be heavily managed so they can produce useful output. Sure, some of them are probably complete crap and need to be let go, but there is plenty of trained-monkey work to be done in a large organization.
Granted, it really depends on the org and situation. If the bottom 50% are made up of people that wield unusually large power (Such as, a company that has
Re:Fire them quickly. (Score:4, Interesting)
That's part of the six sigma bit. I read Jack Welch's book "Winning" and some parts were definitely sociopathic, but even he didn't call for firing the bottom 80% or 50%. I think it was the bottom 20%.
And I think he had a pretty fair method that made it look like an act of mercy. There were various rounds of "hey, you're not doing well, what can we do to make this better," but after that you were axed. And it makes sense. Everybody has skills. Something they're actually good at. Not the best in the world! But there's got to be something that you can do better than average. But whatever your career is, if you're in the bottom 20% of people...it's probably not the right career for you. Getting fired from a job you suck at could be an act of mercy, and the impetus you need to go find something where you aren't in the bottom 20%. Maybe even something where you're in the top 20%!
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This is idiotic. As some other responders have pointed out, this is a management failure. Just about everything that's gone wrong with software engineering can be rightfully blamed on piss-poor management.
If you get rid of more than half your developers, that now leaves that much more work for the remaining ones to do, including a lot of busywork, testing, etc. Do you really want your top-notch developers doing repetitive testing and QA? How long do you think these developers will stick around now that
Anonymous, eh? (Score:5, Funny)
You're not fooling anyone, Lennart.
Re:Anonymous, eh? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why do these posts always get modded down? Where are these people who actually respect the work of Poettering? This topic is very very much about people like him.
He causes damage, does nothing of quality or value... And then... and THEN, he has the gall to openly criticize the entire freaking OSS community because they don't want him working on their projects and he's all butthurt because the project maintainers speak their mind.
It's unrealistic to simply accept everyone who wants to help. Some cannot be worked with in a positive way.
Re:Anonymous, eh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Where are these people who actually respect the work of Poettering?
As a FreeBSD developer, I have a lot of respect for the work Poettering. Every time he releases a new piece of software, we gain a load more users and developers. I can't wait for his next project.
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When rational thought becomes a religion the leaders and followers of that religion will go to war over any outsiders who dare question the religion well before they will attempt to straighten out the inconsistencies within that religion
And in case you are dense, I am equating the current foss environment with religion
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When rational thought becomes a religion the leaders and followers of that religion will go to war over any outsiders who dare question the religion well before they will attempt to straighten out the inconsistencies within that religion
And in case you are dense, I am equating the current foss environment with religion
From The Fine Article:
I have always stayed consistent on this topic: I believe all views and perspectives should be welcome if they are constructive and solutions-oriented. Feel free to rabidly disagree with me, but don't just come to me with complaints. Come with a desire to find solutions, and then we can work together.
Do you have any thoughts to propose that move the conversation from "here's a problem" to "here's a solution"?
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From The Fine Article:
I have always stayed consistent on this topic: I believe all views and perspectives should be welcome if they are constructive and solutions-oriented. Feel free to rabidly disagree with me, but don't just come to me with complaints. Come with a desire to find solutions, and then we can work together.
Do you have any thoughts to propose that move the conversation from "here's a problem" to "here's a solution"?
Pretty simple. Don't go around pointing out problems unless you have a solution, or a proposed path to a solution
The folks who think their opinion is all they need will become pretty evident in short order. I worked with a fellow once who told me "My purpose in life is to point out other people's shortcomings". And id takes a little longer to find those who have a lot of ideas, yet they all involve everyone tasked but themselves.
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Sure, although you might find it a bit droll
When a conversation gets off-track, use conversation to draw it back to the point of the meeting in the first place
Project Managers do it all of the time, either time-boxing conversations, or putting things onto a list to get worked over later
People seem to be pretty understanding when given a list of things that we are going to do now, and things that we are going to do next (sprint like, eh)
What people do not like is when the list of things to get to next never
Re:Anonymous, eh? (Score:4, Insightful)
And the GNOME team isn't exactly a favorite of many people either, so don't look to them for being happy community members (and they are known to reject outside patches anyway. Unless you're going to tell me that Linus himself contributes bad patches...)
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The problem is that his solutions to existing problems aren't perfect
Exactly what problems were being solved with systemd?
Re: Anonymous, eh? (Score:2, Insightful)
Same problems that led SUN and Apple to built new init systems ?
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You mean, "the same problems that Sun (SMF), Apple (Launchd) and Canonical (Upstart) had already solved, making SystemD wholly unnecessary?"
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I'm not really "in the know", but last I heard, Upstart was mostly a giant mess that didn't really work. Is that incorrect?
Personally, I found it kinda, well, comprehensible, unlike init.
Re:Anonymous, eh? (Score:5, Insightful)
So there was a system required that while running can adapt to different hardware configurations on the fly and automaticly solves the interdependencies for different demons, drivers and configurations.
While that is in principle possible with a set of scripts, it easily becomes un-maintenable, as every new hardware or state to support might need a hands-on on every script that might directly or indirectly affected by it, and you'll soon get runtime errors because a required service is not started, or a service, that is no longer required, is eating resources that long should have been freed. There was a system necessary for each demon and service and driver to report their requirements, and to calculate the new set of required resources and running processes, and to automaticly stop, reconfigure and start the approbriate things.
Re:Anonymous, eh? (Score:4, Insightful)
Agree completely. One of the things that really impresses me with systemd is just how event-driven it actually is, and how it separates events from services.
I can have a service that performs some task. I can trigger it to run when another service runs. I can trigger it to run when a target/"runlevel" is activated (the traditional rc.d approach). I can trigger it to run at certain times. I can trigger it to run when a particular udev rule is satisfied. I can trigger it to run when when a file is modified. I can probably trigger it to run when a filesystem is mounted. I can trigger it to run when somebody connects to a socket. I can even trigger it to run conditionally if one of those things happens and the device is in a particular power state, etc.
I think the systemd devs have done a pretty good job of building on the richness of the whole dependency/event-based paradigm.
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I think the systemd devs have done a pretty good job of building on the richness of the whole dependency/event-based paradigm.
There isn't anything you can do with linux+bash that you can't do on an original IBM PC with the ROM Basic interpreter.
That doesn't mean that they're both equally-useful tools for the job.
Why would I want to figure out how to hack together a bunch of stuff using fnotify and a bunch of scripts to launch an executable anytime a file changes when I can just put 3 lines in a text file and symlink it in a directory and systemd does it for me?
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But my init-based laptop does all that just fine. And I don't have any problems adding new hardware to it. It handles switching between different power states just fine, including battery, line, sleep mode and ejecting from its docking station.
As far as I can see, systemd still needs to know interdependences between various system daemons. So if someone is too dense to figure out how to order the init S* and K* scripts, they'll just screw a config file up as well.
So, again, what problems does systemd solv
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many developers have chosen to use PulseAudio
Source?
I don't know anybody who chose to use pulseaudio: people upgraded their distros and found that all of a sudden their sound was doing weird things. Or if they were lucky, pulseaudio worked properly and they didn't even notice that it had been installed. A small percentage (i.e those with shitty hardware who didn't know about dmix) might have noticed that they could suddenly play multiple sounds at once and said "cool". I think you'll find the only people (and I'm not just talking about developers) who
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Everybody chose PulseAudio, because the ALSA and OSS APIs are still there. But "everybody" uses PulseAudio because it has a modern featureset.
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All I'm going to say is "Whoosh!"
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many developers have chosen to use PulseAudio
Source?
http://www.w1hkj.com/ [w1hkj.com]
You'll have to go through it, but this writer suggests pulseaudio for his linux version of his multi-platform communication software.
Nah, I'll be nice : http://www.w1hkj.com/FldigiHel... [w1hkj.com]
This software is designed to use various codecs and programs to send messages, forms, and files under some times very adverse conditions - as when the signal you are trying to get across is actually below the noise floor.?
So we have someone who has written software, since forever, recommends t
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Personal Anecdote (Score:5, Interesting)
I was involved in a particular Open Source project for a long time (between five and ten years). I was an early developer on the project, and at least for a while, one of the leading contributors. Over time my contributions lessened as I had to also make a living, but I was still active in the project and its community.
The leadership got taken over by one developer who was able to work full-time on the project. This developer was overbearing and a subscriber to the idea that being nasty to people made you "as smart as Linus." This developer also ignored input on direction for the project, as it was now "his."
I served as a gadfly, trying to correct the technical issues, and trying to create a more friendly environment for new programmers to participate. Eventually, though, I was "fired" from the project because I was a "non-contributing whiner."
It's disappointing to see how much of my work was trashed, and how the project went from being something interesting to one of the also-rans. Still, it primarily highlighted the biggest problem of software: people suck.
Re:Personal Anecdote (Score:4, Funny)
So, how long did it take you to write those Xinerama compatibility functions for Enlightenment?
Re: Personal Anecdote (Score:2)
Moderated comments like Slashdot? (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe have a slashdot-like karma system, where bad comments on the forums are modded down, and you build up good karma.
Seems like bad people would soon ensure the community would "fire" them.
--PM
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Maybe have a slashdot-like karma system, where bad comments on the forums are modded down, and you build up good karma.
Then you have to worry about the down vote brigade. /.'s solution is many eyes and meta-moderation /.'s system is more open to injustice by dedicated trolls
Reddit's solution is to complain to the moderators.
Reddit's system, can have better outcomes, but requires manpower and trusted individuals.
Wikipedia's system requires politics and the ability to grind down the opposition.
There's no easy answer.
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What if the leader/decision maker is incompetent? (Score:5, Interesting)
Many would think if this term referring to folk who write code. This is OK for me. My problem though, would be how to address technically competent people who make nonsensical decisions.
I remember politely fighting GNOME folks over design decisions they took around the `Open File` dialog box, only to be slammed with what was referred to as "Won't Fix" because it is what they called a "Deliberate Design Decision." No wonder GNOME suffered soon after.
Re:What if the leader/decision maker is incompeten (Score:5, Insightful)
What makes things difficult, is that the people who are wrong don't know they're wrong.
So you have 2 people who think differently and thinking the other is wrong. Which one is? Who knows! Its easy in hindsight of course.
Re:What if the leader/decision maker is incompeten (Score:4, Insightful)
What makes things difficult, is that the people who are wrong don't know they're wrong.
No, that's not the difficult part. That's just a given.
The difficult part is trying to control something you have no control over.
Once you're willing to ignore that "destructive" blogger. And once you're willing to accept that you won't be able to change that person's mind, everything will be infinitely easier for you.
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> So you have 2 people who think differently and thinking the other is wrong. Which one is? Who knows! Its easy in hindsight of course.
don't appear to be easy in hindsight either because gnome 3 still stand by all the bad choices users complained back then....
also I'm sure there were some hundreds of people saying that 4 were wrong...
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When two theories are available and both are compatible with the facts, then there are no other criteria to prefer one over the other except the intuition of the researcher. So one can understand why intelligent scientists, cognizant both of theories and of facts, can still be passionate adherents of opposing theories.
- Albert Einstein
In short, one has to provide reasons why their way is better, and many are not interested in d
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You are right, sometimes decisions *do* need to be made to undo past fails. I think what the parent is suggesting is that these revisions of our current UIs be done with our UI history lessons front of mind.
We've known how to make a fairly decent UI for a while now, even Win7 is fairly intuitive (for varying definitions of 'intuitive'). Going back to Win '95-era UIs or doggedly pursuing a course of action because we've always done it that way is, as you say, not a solution but neither is it what was being s
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Making changes to a design may be justified, but it is the responsibility of those who want to change the design to justify those changes by showing how it makes things easier for the common use case without making the uncommon use cases impossible. If the designer can't do that, then either the
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how to address technically competent people who make nonsensical decisions.
for people who are completely hardened and unwilling to even consider the possibility that they are wrong, there is nothing you can do besides fork the code and go on. however, people may not be hardened like you think so in the case of UI choices, a usability study could be performed. it will require significant effort but it may change some minds. the question you must then contend with is if it's easier to fork or is it worth the effort to run a study. the windows 10 preview was effectively a study o
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I remember politely fighting GNOME folks over design decisions they took around the `Open File` dialog box
Ah yes: GNOME because Motif is just too darn good. It's like they're on this perverse quest to prove it's possible to have a worse UI than an ancient, no longer updated and long obsolete system which was arguably not that great in the first place.
At some point along the way, they removed the ability to filter the contents of that box with wildcards. That's lovely and so if you need to pick out a file fr
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Actually, it does make them incompetent. A competent leader would look at your point of view, recognize that your points have merit (assuming they do), and try to find a compromise design that meets your needs without compromising too much on their goals. Only an incompetent leader is intransigent and is unwilling to adapt his or her views when presented with new information that contradicts them.
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So you put a minimalist and a maximalist together, one wants to remove pretty much every button, option and checkbox to go with "sane defaults" that'll work for 90% of the people 90% of the time. The other wants to give you a zillion controls to cover 99.99% of the people 99.99% of the time but it'll take a rocket scientist to tune every detail and corner case. Both directions have merit, but you can be sure at least one of them will be unhappy and call you a moron. Not to mention if you're known to comprom
Act decisively according to project goals & sk (Score:5, Interesting)
More fundamentally, every project needs to have clearly defined goals as to what they want to accomplish. The schedule of such projects, by the generally voluntary nature of FOSS contribution, may slip, but the cohesion required to achieve these project milestones is only possible in the presence of relatively strong leadership. Strong leadership should also recognize the skill inventory available to the project on a per-contributor basis and encourage those with particular strengths to be used in needed areas modulo personal goals (e.g. growth in coding skills, UI/UX, etc.). Leadership also needs to set down ground rules like mutual respect and positive communication style.
Therefore, project leaders need to manage the relationships between contributors, recognize political and personal differences, and reconcile them reasonably but quickly for the betterment of the project. If that includes terminating the relationship of one or more contributors to said project, then it needs to be done. But before all that happens, project leadership has to set the base of the building correctly before building subsequent floors, as it were.
There's an old saying that says "the fish rots from the head down" and it applies here too: if things are getting out of hand with a project, deal with it but make sure all of the rules were set and the relevant parameters understood prior to drastic action such as terminating a relationship.
That's Easy, Jomo! (Score:2)
Keep all of the idiots that want to work for a millionare for nothing. Fire the others.
Anyone with sense has by now joined a non-profit project.
Re:That's Easy, Jomo! (Score:5, Interesting)
It's just that I object folks who would be good community contributors being lured into being unpaid employees instead.
The GNU Radio project was funded in part by a United States intelligence agency. They paid good money and the result is under GPL. What's not to like?
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It really does look like Jomo did post this article, and it refers to another article of his.
What isn't to like about Ubuntu is that it's a commercial project with a significant unpaid staff. Once in a while I make a point of telling the unpaid staff that there really are better ways that they could be helping Free Software.
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I can't say I'm happy about what's happened to Debian. Having Ubuntu as a commercial derivative really has been the kiss of death for it, not that there were not other problems. It strikes me that the kernel team has done better for its lack of a constitution and elections, and Linus' ability to tell someone to screw off. I even got to tell him to screw off when he was dumping on 'Tridge over Bitkeeper. Somehow, that stuff works.
IMO, don't create a happy inclusive project team full of respect for each other
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This actually has something to do with why so many people hate Systemd. It turns out that Systemd is professional-quality work done by competent salaried engineers. Our problem with it is that we're used to beautiful code made by geniuses. Going all of the way back to DMR.
I can't say I agree. The reason I run systemd (on a distro where it isn't even the default) is that I find it a rather elegant and powerful solution.
I think that the problem is that people conflate good solutions with simple solutions. I'll certainly agree that the old way was simpler. That has a certain beauty to it. The problem is that it doesn't actually solve all the problems well.
This is by no means a software issue exclusively. Take your favorite political soundbite, and most likely it involves t
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Hi AC,
This is sort of self-contradictory, so I don't really need to respond to it directly. I just want to point one thing out. I can't afford to work for any company as less than a C-level employee. It would be a salary cut from my current business.
Not to mention that I'd not like it.
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Right. I didn't even bother responding to the taunts.
Coward really means coward. I am sorry for the folks who are afraid that their employer will take a dislike of what they post, but for them we have handles.
"Special Snowflakes" and a Nominating Committee (Score:2)
First, don't resort to name-calling. "Special Snowflakes" is name calling.
Set up a leadership structure. Stick to it. If it involves elections, include a nominating committee that decides who can run for leadership roles.
This is how it's done in grownup circles. The failure to do it doomed Occupy Wall Street from the get-go and has allowed many other movements to be hijacked over the years.
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OWS was an experimental event anyway. Whatever "they" decide to do in the future, it will be based on what they've learned from the OWS experience.
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"Special Snowflake" and "Social Justice Warrior" aren't pejoratives in the sense that "idiot" or "cocksucker" are.
Sure they are -- they're just really early on the euphemism treadmill [wikipedia.org]
Can you recall a time when someone didn't use one of these terms as a put-down? I sure can't.
Yaz
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"Social Justice Warrior" is almost meaningless and appears to mean either "Someone who I dont agree with" or "Someone to the left of hitler".
I got called it recently for stating if someone where stalking my daughter I'd probably take a gun to them. And if that makes me a "social justice warrior" then SJW it is either. Better that than a neglectful father.
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I've never heard "SJW" used before of someone engaging in actual combat! I suspect someone was being ironic. The term generally means someone who's idea of activism exclusively involves social media - a variant of "keyboard warrior" - for self-described "social justice" causes.
You can't have both. (Score:4, Insightful)
If you want a welcoming, inclusive community, you don't get to decide certain elements don't belong and remove them.
If you want to do that, you don't really want a welcoming, inclusive community, what you want is a community of elite according to a set of standards.
So, decide what it is you're choice will be and focus in on it, then everything will become obvious.
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If you want to do that, you don't really want a welcoming, inclusive community, what you want is a community of elite according to a set of standards.
No... you by definition want a restricted community. Which may be welcoming and inclusive, with exceptions.
Labelling "Community of elite" may well be one of those opinion / destructive element thingies.
Sometimes communities want a meritocracy, not an elite.
No, you're not entitled to your opinion. Or to be more precise, you are only entitled to contra
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Look, ISIS certainly welcomes you to our community - have no doubt about that. And of course, we certainly want to you feel fully included. But this is a caliphate, and we have certain standards. So, it really isn't asking much that you do exactly what the Caliph has ordained...
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Fix This Problem Early (Score:2)
The phony self esteem syndrome starts very early these days, and is made monumentally worse by PC-infested public schools. It's become so unfashionable to simply tell people that they're not the geniuses they think they are, and so impossible to avoid parental wrath when a kid is correctly identified as merely average (or, unthinkably, less than average), that we're now manufactu
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The topic at hand is the paralysis in dealing with over-inflated cases of self esteem. There is a very distinct group of people (and profession) that see pushing that inflation as a virtue rather than as the sabotage that it really is. Given your reaction, it looks like they did a number on you, too.
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Actually, the problem is that we didn't systematically try creating "over-inflated self esteem" until a couple decades ago, and this was tried (and is still being done) despite people who actually study group dynamics and the like trying to get attention for the fact that this is actually a horrible idea based off what would have to work to be pseudoscience. (It started with somebody's not-reality-tested theory about the cause of many ills becoming popular...before anybody went "Wait, is this an actual corr
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ScentCone degrading the conversation into a political ideological rant
You don't think that the recent (last 20 years, but last 10 especially) change in applied teaching philosophies - the sort of thing that now insists there is no such thing as the winner of a game, or as a day that goes by without someone who merely shows up getting the same reward as the person who shows up and works very hard - has any ideological component? Are you so disconnected from what's going on in contemporary classrooms that you can't grasp the influence that world view (ideology) has in driving
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the topic at hand is how to deal with group dynamics while keeping the inclusive nature of the open source community
No, the topic at hand was "how to fire" people who are whiny under-producers, but who think they are entitled to have a place at the table anyway. Why are you trying to change the subject from what the OP specifically asked? Because it's uncomfortable to recognize that indeed some people are just no good at some things no matter how much they whine, and it's NOT about "group dynamics," it's about getting rid of them so the group can actually get something done once rid of them.
you act as if group dynamics didn't exist before the "aging and nouveau hippies" even existed
No, I maintain that we have
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from TFS: "...you want to foster an open, welcoming, and empowered community."
And from the SUBJECT of the post, "On Firing..."
It's about how to jettison those people because their sense of entitlement is toxic to the project and to the people who have to put up with it. And that sense of entitlement is actually having a dire impact on our culture and our economy, and it is much worse than it has been, historically. And it is absolutely propped up and hugely made worse by people who - for ideological reasons - seek to transform our relationship with the government and the experien
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Actually, this is an incredibly well-documented issue within the social sciences: the self-esteem movement was...well, to say it was 'bad science' implies that science of any sort was involved at any point beyond debunking it.
Hey, let's start with the whole 'bullying' thing!
You see, the self-esteem movement was based off the idea that bullying was caused by low self-esteem. To say that there was no research backing this up is a bit of an understatement, given that what we've now got is a lot of evidence tha
Don't let them in? (Score:5, Insightful)
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opinions don't count (Score:5, Insightful)
Commits count.
Turning up to a gig doesn't give you the right to dictate what the band plays. But if you turn up to the REHEARSALS for the gig armed with recordings and knowledge of the band's previous performances and sheet music containing instructions on how to correctly play something that the band had previously been fucking up without knowing it, then there's a chance that the squiggles and dots you've written might be performed at the next gig.
If the band chooses to not perform your squiggles and dots then just leave and perform them yourself.
Two words (Score:4)
So what's the best way to foster a welcoming environment while still being able to remove the destructive elements?
Benevolent Dictatorship.
Make it clear from the start to everyone on the project that while you're going to remain hands off as much as possible and let everyone do their thing, you're still the ultimate authority and you won't hesitate to step in and start cracking heads if people start causing drama and/or forget how to be adults and let their disagreements get out of hand.
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So if your dictator decides he wants to be a DICKtator, your project is in big trouble.
That's the point when you take the source code (that's the whole point of open source right?) and make a new project not managed by an idiot.
Special Snowflakes (Score:2)
.... looking into the mirror...
Swift execution (Score:2)
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/57643/focus=57918 [gmane.org]
In the sight of the newsgroup, in the name of software stability and maintainability, I Linus Torvalds, creator and maintainer of linux, creator of git, sentence you to die. You will speak no final word.
Define the rules clearly... (Score:4, Insightful)
The C4.1 contribution protocol I eventually wrote for ZeroMQ solved this problem. You have to develop rules that catch bad actors (yet not learners) and then educate project managers on how to fire people when needed.
Our rules for instance ask that you solve one problem with one patch, that you never break existing stable APIs, that you respect style guidelines, and so on. When people break these rules we give them several chances to improve their behavior. If they persist in doing it wrong, we remove them.
Turns out, when the rules are very explicit and teach people how to make good patches, then it's very rare we have to fire people.
The rules are at http://rfc.zeromq.org/spec:22 [zeromq.org]
Call Them Out / Tarnish Their Reputation (Score:3, Interesting)
While this might not be the most subtle way of handling things, it could be quite effective to repeat the same question every time they are critical. "What have you contributed?"
Just ignore their arguments and ask them what they have contributed. Over and over and over again.
They will either go away, stop posting so much, contribute, or perhaps realize that the whole point of the movement is to contribute actual code and functionality.
On the Internet, ignore them. In real life, talk about them every time they open their mouth and complain. "Oh there goes Joe again, whining and NOT CONTRIBUTING." Then return to your regularly scheduled activities of doing things.
Re: (Score:3)
The question was specifically how to deal with people who only offer criticism and do not contribute anything themselves.
Criticism is a part of development or any creative effort. Development is an iterative process and requires feedback and input from lots of people.
However the person who should leave the team is the person who does not have anything to offer. If someone's only "contribution" is to suggest how other people "should" be doing the work, that person is not really contributing.
There is an old
When no one wants you to work for free... (Score:5, Interesting)
When no one wants you to work for free, it's time to recognize that you have some serious personality and skillset defects.
I've never worked on an open source project other than my own, but I've spent many a long hour with the "negative contributors" in the business world since around '87. Unfortunately, we never could get rid of those people on the project teams because they were always managers and "key business users" (i.e. The worst employee in a customer department that they wanted to shuffle off onto someone else, such as working on another department's project instead of in their own.)
The thing is, sometimes those complaining users are a goldmine of information who just have a tough time explaining themselves. One of the shop floor managers at my second "permanent" job with Northern Telecom was a real hard case. He'd pin you with a barrage of questions, berate you for not meeting his needs, and was just generally a real asshole to most of the people he dealt with. But if you were able to answer his questions for a couple weeks and could take care of a couple of the backlogged items on his "need" list, he became an absolute joy to work with.
You see, the man was just jaded by decades of working with "elite" programmers who wouldn't listen to him about how the shop floor should be running. For years and years and years, the engineers and programmers had done what they thought was right for systems design instead of listening to the people who would be using it. It turns out he had tremendous insight into the way his people were actually doing their work, and how the computer systems could fit into that workflow instead of being a hindrance.
I've also dealt with people who were just cranky deadweight, contributing nothing of value to any of the projects they were on. Alas, they couldn't be fired without going through channels. Only once did I manage to get someone who was so negative terminated by a company. They reported to me, and were so poisonous to the department that productivity improved 20% after they left -- without hiring a replacement. It turns out they spent so much time complaining in meetings and during "cube visits" that they were slowing everybody in the department down, as well as stressing everyone out with their negativity.
So, yes, there are people who should be fired -- even if they aren't getting paid in the first place. But before you write someone off as being a belligerent know-nothing, take the time to talk to them and learn if their concerns and issues are legitimate. You could be missing out on some valuable opportunities by writing off someone with poor communication skills as being "just an asshole."
Did you READ... (Score:2)
...anything in the comment you replied to??? Apparently not.
Re: (Score:2)
The thing is, being an asshole shouldn't be relevant. Is the person contributing good code? That's all that should matter.
That is hardly true. If nobody wants to work for you because one of your top contributors drives everybody nuts, then you have to decide whether their sole contributions really do outweigh everything you're losing.
Sometimes the asshole really is a special snowflake and you just move them to their own side of the office and insulate them from everybody else and pander to them. Maybe you pay everybody who has to work with them an extra 20% to get them to put up with it. However, more often than not they're
Bias in the question? (Score:2)
Just reading the question, there is no possible way that the anonymous person asking the question is unbiased. The question is full of insults. As such there's not a good answer to give because the problem may lie with the leadership.
Once someone starts insulting the coworkers it's really hard to be objective about their opinions. We're hearing only one side of the story and that side is already dysfunctional. I sense that there is a bigger problem than just one problem volunteer.
Maybe that's an open so
we all know...fear.. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering
In this case the suffering is giving up and just buying a Microsoft product.
Things I've learned over the decade-plus... (Score:4, Interesting)
One of the things I learned early on as a tweenager within the FOSS was that if you have a good idea and can communicate well & civilly, nobody actually seems to care terribly much if you possibly are a dog that somehow learned how to type. You don't necessarily have to be good at coding, if what you bring to the table is a good ability to understand the basics and play a living 'rubber duck'--basic sanity checks, to see if what the coders are attempting to do makes sense to somebody who, if nothing else, has at least managed to sleep in the past week. (This isn't meant to be insulting: I've been on the coding side as well: Sometimes I will grab random lusers for the job, and I've learned everybody's happier sometimes when you have a volunteer handy. Less chasing people down in hallways, cornering them in bathrooms, and...I'd certainly have answered a few times the question "Did you sleep in the last week?" with "...Does passing out count?")
I honestly don't really trust communities that say they're 'welcoming' to be so, in my experience, though. What I want is one which gives me nice, clear, well-defined rules: I can deal with being told that I need to contribute things to the group that they value in order to gain status, and live with the baseline rule that if somebody is kicked out, it will be for violating clearly-defined objective rules ("Fails to brownnose correct people" should never be on the list!) and we will all know this. I'm even okay with it if leniency can be earned: If you somehow can bash your head on a keyboard and still generate code that works perfectly, I can put up with a lot of crazy--and I know how to ignore somebody.
Really, I think a basic rule of "The community decides the value of your contribution, not you" isn't unwelcoming, as long as it's clearly and openly stated from the start.
Re: (Score:2)
Few of us are that driven by rules to the exclusion of social mores. And attempting to run a group that way will exclude those who aren't, I suggest, which may be a useful set of people for all sorts of contingent and correlated reasons (eg people with especially good empathy and outreach and comms skills).
Rgds
Damon
Re: (Score:2)
One of the things I learned early on as a tweenager within the FOSS was that if you have a good idea and can communicate well & civilly, nobody actually seems to care terribly much if you possibly are a dog that somehow learned how to type.
If somebody can communicate well and civilly, then they aren't a dog that somehow learned how to type. I think the whole point of the article is that some people don't communicate well and civilly.
GIMP, anyone? (Score:3)
The way I see it, it's often the programmers who are the problem. They think they're the special snowflakes and their way of seeing things is the one and only way of doing things and everybody else got it wrong.
The best example I can think of is GIMP. Every other pixel-based editor on the planet works similarly enough that there's almost no learning curve. If you know one, you can work in the others. But GIMP? Of course not, GIMP is a special snowflake and the users are the problem.
there are plenty of open source leeches (Score:2)
There's a guy I know. Call him Charlie. Not his real name. In fact, it's more than one guy. I'm sure you know many Charlies, too.
Charlie is a core contributor to half a dozen high profile open source projects. Not that he actually, contributes anything useful. But he hangs out on the irc channel and did just enough (which probably involved closing tickets as "will not fix") to get invited as a core team member. Based on his name, other projects invite him as a core contributor.
I run an open source
First, Stop the Abstract Judging (Score:4, Insightful)
Be careful, the Devils advocate is useful (Score:2)
In Team management, a team is more productive with a devils advocate that challenges and pushes others. Linus holds the devils advocate position for Linux as he constantly challenges and even causes issues with others.
The problem of being a Devil's Advocate is that they are seen as "Obstructionists, nay Sayers, anti-anything, slowdown members, etc" and when given a choice are the first voted out of a team. When the Devil's Advocate (or Angel member as we try and name them) are gone, the team starts to los
Special Snowflakes and The Thaw (Score:3)
Re:How about... (Score:5, Insightful)
In fairness - if you're actually the one(s) doing much of the work to create something being used by millions of people with minimal compensation - you *are* a pretty special snowflake. *Especially* compared to the asshat who contributes nothing but vitriolic, non-constructive commentary.
Re: How about... (Score:2)
Those who complain about it are immediately off base at this point. Don't
Re: (Score:2)
Wanting a positive atmosphere within the project is one thing. Worrying about angry blog posts is insecure and petty at best.
I think the concern was more with angry blog posts and other passive-aggressive behavior on community-provided sites.
If you want to rant on your random wordpress page, that is your right. If you want it to be on some blog aggregator provided by the people you're complaining about, that is another matter.
Re: (Score:2)
That's no different from closed source development. Do you think Microsoft or Apple care about the opinions of people who aren't going to buy their products? There is basically only one way to contribute to a closed source project: pay money to the developers. That works for open source too, but you can also produce code, documentation (please!), artwork, detailed and reproducible bug reports (please!). People who contribute in any of these ways are valuable to the project and their opinions should be c
Re: (Score:2)
He who would do battle with the many-headed hydra of human nature must pay a world of pain & his family must pay it along with him! & only as you gasp your dying breath shall you understand, your life amounted to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean!
Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?